Women Against Sexual Slavery

THE REDDY SEXUAL SLAVERY CASE IN BERKELEY: UNFINISHED STORY
^©by Diana E. H. Russell, Ph.D.

WOMEN AGAINST SEXUAL SLAVERY (WASS) was founded in June 2000 to educate the public and mobilize protest against wealthy Indian-American Berkeley landlord Lakireddy Bali Reddy, 62(1) and other members of his criminal family. Reddy and his sons Prasad, 41, and Vijay Lakireddy, 30, along with his brother Jayaprakash Lakireddy, 46, and his sister-in-law Annapurna Lakireddy, 45, were charged with tax fraud and conspiring to falsify documents in order to smuggle numerous illegal Indian immigrants into Berkeley to work as indentured servants in Reddy's Pasand Madras Indian Cuisine Restaurant(2) and other family-run businesses -- and in the case of young girls, to serve as Reddy's personal sex slaves and unpaid laborers.

The Reddy case unfolded when 17-year-old Chanti Prattipati and her 15-year-old sister Lalitha(3) were found unconscious on November 24, 1999, by their 18-year-old(4) roommate Laxmi Patati in a Berkeley, California, apartment owned by Reddy. Laxmi had stayed overnight at Reddy's home in Berkeley when the other girls were poisoned by carbon monoxide from a blocked heating vent. She notified Reddy's family members at the Pasand Restaurant about the state of her two roommates, and they informed Reddy.

When Reddy arrived at the Bancroft Way apartment, he failed to call either the police or an ambulance. Instead, he had his van brought to the front of the apartment house where he and some of his employees and members of his family proceeded to remove the girls down a dark, enclosed stairwell that was adjacent to an open, clearly visible staircase. They carried Lalitha, who was unconscious, out of the building to Reddy's awaiting van, attempting to conceal her body by wrapping her in a carpet or cloth before depositing her in a the van. They also tried to drag Laxmi into the van despite the fact that she was screaming and resisting their attempts in great agitation.

Berkeley resident Marcia Poole happened to be driving down Bancroft Way when this suspicious-looking scene unfolded before her. She watched as three or four men proceeded to the van carrying a large bundle with a discernable sag in the middle. She was horrified when she saw a leg dangle from the bundle before it was deposited in the van. She slowed her car to a crawl as she watched the men run back to a larger group of Indian men and women who had surrounded Laxmi. They attempted to push and pull her toward the van. Laxmi was crying and resisting their efforts with all her might.

Poole hastily jumped out of her car and attempted to thwart the efforts of Laxmi's would-be kidnappers by demanding that they stop trying to force her into Reddy's van. They ignored Poole's plea and a man whom she later identified as Reddy told her, "Mind your own business! Go away! This is a family affair." Poole refused to oblige him. Instead, she hailed two passing motorists and begged them to call 911 as she continued her efforts to prevent the attempted kidnapping from succeeding. Although the two male motorists would not get out of their cars to assist Poole with her solitary intervention of the kidnapping, one of them called the police. When sirens were heard approaching, the group that had been trying to force Laxmi into the van melted away into the surrounding area, leaving only Poole and the young girls at the scene.

After the paramedics, fire personnel and police arrived, the original group that had tried to abduct the girls started reappearing as if they had just happened upon the scene in passing. Poole gave the police a full account of what she had witnessed but, incredibly, the police decided that nothing was amiss. This hasty judgment was based on their naive reliance on Reddy as translator of Laxmi's answers to their questions. Reddy was therefore able to misrepresent her statements to the police. He also falsely identified Venkateswara Vemireddy for the police as Chanti and Lalitha's father. In fact, the girls -- who were using the phony last name was Vemireddy -- were unrelated to Venkateswara and his alleged wife Padma who were actually siblings. According to a newspaper account, Reddy had "paid off an unknown amount of debt for Venkateswara in India and loaned him $6,500 to buy a pair of airline tickets to the United States for him and his sister" in return for his cooperation in Reddy's immigration scam to get these two adolescent sex slaves to Berkeley (AP, January 19, 2000).

Alta Bates Hospital nurse Connie Kulick reported in the Coroner Investigator's Report (March 3, 2000) that "this 17 year old female [Chanti] died at Alta Bates Hospital, in Berkeley" (p. 2). Lalitha "was treated and released the next day" (AP, Jan. 19, 2000). Despite the lack of time to properly investigate the case, Bobby Miller, a spokesperson for the Berkeley police, reported that Chanti's death "had been ruled accidental," and that the case was closed (AP, Jan. 19, 2000). An autopsy found that Chanti was pregnant.

Contradicting Reddy's report to the police that Venkateswara was the father of the Prattipati sisters, Poole told Berkeley Police Chief Dash Butler in a telephone conversation four days after Chanti's death that she was certain that this man was an imposter because of his lack of distress on seeing the terrible state of his alleged daughters. Despite the accuracy of Poole's observation, the police ignored her and chose instead to believe Reddy. They also failed to file charges against Reddy and his collaborators for their attempted kidnapping of Laxmi.

Reddy was born in 1937 in Velvadam -- a rural village of 8,000 people in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh where Telugu is the language spoken. When he was 17, he married a 14-year old -- the first of his three marriages, none of which lasted. Reddy came to the United States in 1960 when he was in his early 20s to study engineering at

University of California in Berkeley, but found business more to his liking. He opened the Pasand Madras Indian Cuisine Restaurant in downtown Berkeley in 1975. With the proceeds from this successful business, he started buying rundown Berkeley apartment buildings. Eventually he owned over 1,000 apartments which earned him approximately one million dollars a month, making him the largest and wealthiest landlord in Berkeley after the University of California. He also opened a construction company which he partnered with a brother, a Real Estate Company located a few doors down from the Pasand Restaurant, a second Pasand Restaurant in Santa Clara(5), and nightclubs in Berkeley and San Francisco. By 2000, his properties were valued at more then $69 million. According to journalist Anita Chabria (2001),

Reddy, who visits Velvadam twice a year, is often praised for his alleged altruism because of his many useful community projects in this village. For example, he

"built two elementary schools and a high school, created sources of clean drinking water and paid for a new wing at the local hospital. He spent more than $1 million to build the Lakireddy Bali Reddy College of Engineering, where more than 400 students study on state-of-the art computers." (Chabria, November 25, 2001).

By 1986, he also "began providing a back door into America for some of the village's poorest residents" (Chabria).

George Iype, an Associate editor of an Indian on-line daily publication (Rediff.com), offers the following explanation for Reddy's so-called altruism:

"Charity was Balireddy's weapon. He paid at least Rs 500,000 each for the Mahashivratri and Vinayaka Chaturthi celebrations every year. Small wonder then that he became a cult figure to the villagers, who looked at him with awe."

It was Reddy's massive earnings from his many Berkeley businesses and his harsh exploitation of his employees that enabled Reddy to enhance his power and prestige in Velvadam -- where he was seen as God -- by donating some of his ill-gotten riches for his community ventures. It is not unusual in many societies for "generous" donations to serve a necessary or important avenue to power and status.

The Role of the Caste System

Many of the residents of Velvadam are Dalits -- or so-called "untouchable" people -- on the bottom rung of Indian society. The Dalits constitute one sixth of India's population. Chabria (2001) notes that

"Dalits are treated as subhuman, so low that they are not even considered part of Hinduism's caste system. They're only allowed work that Hindus don't want, such as cleaning sewers and toilets, removing carcasses or digging graves." (p. )

Although Reddy does not belong to the highest caste, the Brahmins, his caste status is much higher than the poverty-stricken Dalit villagers in Velvadam. Reddy's three sex slaves -- who were all born in Velvadam -- and most of the other indentured laborers whom he enabled to come to Berkeley, are Dalits.

Lalitha and Chanti's parents are extremely poor. Their father, Jarmani, only earns the equivalent of $1 a day carrying cement and water for construction crews. The family lives in a segregated part of the village in a mud-walled hut with no electricity or running water" (Chabria, 2001). Jarmani was unable to "afford the dowry required to allow his daughters to marry. So when Reddy, considered a god by the people of Velvadam, singled out destitute young girls such as the Prattipati sisters to receive his aid, no one questioned his intentions" (Chabria, 2001). Even many of the victims "view Reddy as a savior rather than a trafficker in human lives."

Berkeley High School Students Break Through the Media Silence

In the fall of 1999, the teacher of a journalism class at Berkeley High School suggested to two of his students, Meg Greenwell and Illiana Montauk, that they explore the fate of the Prattipati sisters by questioning people in the community about them. The two young students published their findings in their school newspaper (Berkeley High Jacket, 12/10/1999), including their observation that the girls should have been in school -- given their youthful age -- instead of working for Reddy. It was only after the publication of Greenwell and Montauk's groundbreaking article that the media belatedly started asking questions about this case, and that the police -- also belatedly -- started investigating Reddy's relationship with the girls.

The Inept Police Investigation

The Berkeley police began their examination of the Reddy case as a negligent death investigation. They concluded that a leaking gas heater in the apartment the girls shared had caused the carbon monoxide fumes. Although the police determined that this leak was accidental, landlords are typically held responsible for injuries and deaths that occur because of their failure to keep their properties in a good state of repair. Altogether, about 63 leaks were found in the apartment building.

Despite all the suspicious circumstances surrounding this case, the police absolved Reddy of any responsibility for Chanti's death and pronounced her demise to have been "accidental."

Reddy Guilty of Murder

Members of WASS believe that -- at the very least -- Reddy is guilty of negligent homicide for not repairing the gas leak in the Bancroft Way apartment where his three sex slaves resided, causing the death of Chanti Prattipati.

Since Chanti was still alive when Reddy arrived at the girls' apartment (the fact that she died at hospital was documented above), Reddy may be responsible for Chanti's death because of the precious time that he and his assistants wasted trying to remove her, Lalitha, and Laxmi from the apartment in Reddy's van instead of calling an ambulance. In this case, Reddy would be guilty of murder -- or, in feminist terminology, femicide (the killing of a female by a male because she is female).

Furthermore, we believe Reddy may be guilty of conspiring to murder Chanti (had she not died), Lalitha and their roommate Laxmi. His behavior suggests that he didn't want the police to know about the carbon monoxide poisoning of the two sisters, or to investigate his relationships with his three young sex slaves. Yet he must have known that the poisoned girls would likely die without treatment.

Reddy's behavior also suggests that he didn't care if the young Prattipati sisters died. It appears that he only cared about concealing their bodies and removing them from the scene. (When Reddy cried after pleading guilty in court, he only apologized to his family -- not his victims.) We suspect that Reddy probably planned to dispose of Chanti's corpse and Lalitha's soon-to-be corpse, and, after killing Laxmi, dispose of hers as well.

Given the extreme fear of Reddy's sex slaves for their own lives and for the lives of their families in Velvadam, it could be that they and other villagers know that Reddy is capable of causing his enemies or those toward whom he feels retributive, to "disappear." After Judge Armstrong sentenced Reddy, she required that he publicize to the inhabitants of Velvadam that he would not engage in retributive acts against the girls' families because of their role in causing his incarceration. The judge also required him to tell his supporters not to engage in retributive acts on his behalf. The fact that Judge
Armstrong found it necessary to insist that Reddy obey these requirement suggests that she may have grounds to suspect him of being prone to commit lethal vengeance. If Reddy were to engage in murdering Mr. and Mrs. Prattipati regardless of his public statement to the people of Valvadam, he could always claim that one of his many adoring supporters was probably responsible the crimes.

Prosecuting attorney Corrigan hinted that Reddy might be responsible for a double murder. Specifically, he reported "being worried about the safety of witnesses in light of the 'mysterious, unsolved deaths' of witnesses in India" (Sexton, Daily Cal., p. 1). Sivareddy Seelam, "a former Berkeley resident and associate of Reddy" was "doused with acid outside his family's home in Velvadam in April 2000. His grandson also died in the attack" (Sexton, p. 5). In addition, Corrigan referred to "threats directed at other witnesses."

The fact that Reddy was never charged with negligent homicide, regular homicide and/or conspiracy to commit homicide (femicide) will be discussed in a later section.

Go to part II